The Man The Mountain Buried

Chapter Four: Thin Ice

By morning, the story had already been told without him.

Reinholt was in the hotel lobby before breakfast, telling guests and reporters how his patrol had climbed through the storm to pull a journalist out of the Seam. Tomas Verhoeven had been moved into a private room at the clinic under "family security," with two of Reinholt's men outside the door. Nobody mentioned the lift mechanic. Luca hadn't slept. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw an orange glove a meter deep in blue ice.

At ten, a message came down to the maintenance hut. He was wanted at the Summit Terrace.

The Ostergaards opened every season with a brunch on the terrace below the peak, beside the frozen lake, and this year they had flown in the richest guests in Europe to drink champagne in furs under patio heaters. A visiting foreign minister sat near the front with his family, his bodyguards pretending to be guests. Out on the lake, a cluster of ice sculptures glittered in the sun, swans and stags and a life-sized horse rearing on its hind legs. A string quartet played. Luca walked through it all in his work overalls, and conversations faded as he passed.

Rasmus Ostergaard was waiting at the top of the terrace steps. He was thirty, handsome in the way money made people handsome, and he looked well rested. Luca kept his eyes low and his hands loose, because Grease didn't look rich men in the face.

"This is the man," Rasmus announced, loud enough for every table to hear. "He stole patrol equipment last night. He took a boy off a lift in a storm and carried him down a closed couloir. He nearly killed him." He shook his head sadly. "Abducted, really. You're fired."

A murmur went through the guests. Luca said nothing.

Rasmus reached out and unbuckled the tool belt from Luca's waist, slowly, the way a man takes a collar off a dog. He weighed it in his hand, then swung his arm and hurled it over the railing. It skidded far out across the lake and came to rest near the sculptures.

"Go on," Rasmus said. "Fetch."

The guests laughed. Someone whistled. At the head table, Gunnar Ostergaard sat with his coffee, silver haired and calm, and watched the whole thing with a small, pleased smile.

Luca walked down the steps and out onto the ice.

It was solid near the shore, thick and grey and scarred by skates, but further out it turned darker. His eyes moved over it the way they always did, reading. The sculpture display sat over the deepest part of the lake, tons of carved ice set down in one place, and the sun had been on it all morning. He saw faint white lines spreading out from the base of the horse at the same moment he heard them, a sharp crack like a rifle shot.

The ice under the sculptures sagged. The minister's grandson, eight years old in a red snowsuit, had wandered out to touch the stag, and he dropped straight through into black water.

Screams broke out on the terrace. A woman shrieked the boy's name. Three of Reinholt's patrolmen vaulted the railing and sprinted toward the hole, and the first of them got within five meters before the surface folded under him and he went in too.

"Stop!" Luca's voice cut across the lake. "Everybody back! Get off the ice!"

The other two patrolmen skidded to a halt. Luca was already down. He lay flat on his stomach and spread his arms and legs wide to share his weight across as much ice as he could, then slid himself forward on his elbows. The ice groaned and flexed beneath him, so he moved slowly and kept moving.

The boy was clawing at the edge of the hole, and the ice kept breaking off in his small hands. His mouth was open but no sound came out, because the cold had stolen his breath. The patrolman thrashed a meter away, dragged down by his heavy gear.

Luca reached the tool belt where it lay near the edge and took it by the buckle. He swung the heavy end out over the water. "Grab it! Both hands!"

The boy's fingers found the leather and locked on. Luca drew him in, sliding backward inch by inch, until the child came up onto the ice like a seal. Luca pulled him clear of the edge, then slid back for the patrolman, threw the belt again and hauled him out the same way.

On the shore, the boy lay grey and still. He wasn't breathing. The resort doctor knelt beside him and then hesitated, his hands hovering uselessly over the small chest.

Luca dropped down beside him. He tipped the boy's head back, pinched his nose and gave five slow breaths. Then he set the heel of his hand on the center of the boy's chest and pressed, hard and fast, counting under his breath. Nobody on the terrace made a sound. He gave two more breaths and went back to compressions, and on the second round the boy jerked, coughed up a gush of lake water and began to cry.

Nobody was laughing now.

Luca stripped off his jacket and wrapped the boy in it. The minister had pushed through the crowd and fell to his knees in the snow, and he gathered his grandson into his arms, jacket and all. Over the child's wet head, his eyes dropped to Luca's hands. The palms were crossed with old rope scars, thick white lines that no lift mechanic would ever earn. The minister stared at them for a long moment.

Someone on the terrace started to clap, and then everyone was clapping. Rasmus stood at the top of the steps with his mouth shut tight. Beside him, Sigrid stood at the railing with her hands at her sides, watching Luca, and she didn't clap at all.

* * *

That afternoon, Gunnar Ostergaard's phone buzzed on the desk in his study.

The message was from Reinholt. It was a single photograph, taken at the Seam in the flat grey light after the storm. Two snow pickets were buried at the edge of the crevasse, and a rope was tied off around them in three locked loops.

Gunnar set down his pen. He enlarged the picture and studied it for a long time, turning the phone in the light from the window, while the fire crackled in the grate behind him. Then he called Reinholt.

"Only one man ever tied it like

that," he said. "Find out where the mechanic sleeps."